The lawns, ponds and forest around one of Battle Creek’s newest health care facilities are an example of modern design merging with its environment to create a pleasing landscape, but there’s another purpose at work.

Officials involved in the construction of the Borgess Health Park, 3035 Capital Ave. S.W., say that environmentally friendly technology is part of the $26.9 million facility.

The Borgess Health Park is scheduled to open in June after Portage-based American Village Builders finishes construction.

“We’re about health care individually and health care in the community,” Borgess Vice President of General Services and Property Management Eric Buzzell said last week. “We feel like the statement we make with our buildings and with our actions really add to that.”

Near the parking lot entrance are large surface water retention ponds, which Buzzell and AVB Project Superintendent Rick Ball said are designed to look like natural ponds and can hold a 100-year rainfall — rain events expected to occur just once per century.

There will also be two electric car plug-in stations for recharging vehicles, Buzzell said. They’re standard at other Borgess sites, he said.

At first, Buzzell said, nobody used them.

“Oh, I hope this wasn’t a big mistake,” he remembers thinking two years ago when they were installed. “But no, we’ve got several people. In fact, every day, those stations have been full.”

The roof of the building is painted white to reflect sunlight, and the entire building is wrapped in a sprayed-on insulation to help keep the thermostat under control and operating at peak efficiency.

Ball said the twin boilers in the building were only operating at 26 percent of capacity on one of this winter’s coldest days.

A computer system uses heat sensors in every room to detect when people are in the room. Motion sensors are commonly used for turning lights on and off as people enter and leave rooms, but this system will also control air conditioning and ventilation.

The inside and the outside of the building are lit by LED lighting, which is not only more efficient than incandescent or even mercury bulbs, but also requires less time devoted to changing burned-out lights, Ball said.

Buzzell said there’s a lot of up-front expense when you’re installing energy-efficient technology, but the savings are worth it; he estimated an energy bill that will be about 20 percent cheaper.

Borgess’ move to green technology is about more than money, though, Buzzell said.

If so, it’s a good time for actions. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a March 31 report detailing how the effects of climate change are already felt on all continents, and little is being done to combat it.

That work is necessary to protect those in poverty in the short-term and everyone in the long-term.

“For most economic sectors, the impacts of drivers such as changes in population, age structure, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, and governance are projected to be large relative to the impacts of climate change,” the report said.

In the face of a changing world, some businesses are working to adapt to more energy efficient technology, even at the local level.

“Denso has a very strong philosophy in that it has a vision for a society where automobiles coexist in harmony with the environment,” Frink said. “They kind of take that all the way through and have a strong environmental plan and have products that are environmentally friendly, factories that are more environmentally friendly and action plans to make sure that really happens.”

Frink said Denso has recently implemented a number of energy-saving measures, such as installing a roof that eliminates 250 tons of carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. Overall, greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by 28 percent since 1999 despite the company producing more parts than ever, she said.

Water recycling there saves about 6.3 million gallons annually, Frink said.

Meanwhile, at Kellogg Community College, two free electric car-charging stations at the main campus and the school’s Regional Manufacturing Technology Center are available, but see little use, college spokesman Eric Greene said.

The school received grant money to install those, and Greene said KCC was considered by the Michigan Community College Network to be the sixth-most energy-efficient community college in the state with a cost of 8 cents per cubic foot.

The stations were installed in 2011 under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act’s ChargePoint America program. According to ChargePoint, southern Michigan was one of 10 regions across the nation to receive grant money.

KCC could begin charging for station usage, but they remain free for now because they’re so rarely used.

Doug Voshell of Battle Creek Unlimited said the public sector is actually quicker to respond to fighting energy inefficiency than the private sector.

“But we have had interest expressed by businesses, asking us, ‘Is there study work being done to determine everything from is there enough sunshine to or enough wind, is there any hydro availability in the area?” Voshell said. “To this point, there’s not been a lot of implementation.”

At Borgess, Buzzell said the merging of health care and energy efficiency are natural as people are affected by their environment, but it’s also good business.

“It makes sense economically to do the right thing,” Buzzell said. “When you look at energy and the cost of energy, and it seems to go nowhere but up...the message has a lot of unity in it. It’s not a hard sell.”

Call Andy Fitzpatrick at 966-0697. Follow him on Twitter: @am_fitzpatrick.

More on climate change

Nobel laureate Richard Alley will speak on climate change at 7 p.m. Thursday at Albion College’s Goodrich Chapel as part of the college’s 25th annual Elkin R. Isaac Student Research Symposium. The event is free and open to the public.